Karen, Your posting enclosing David R. Francis's excellent article on the "lumpiness" of the distribution of key resources has sent me off at a tangent -- but only a slight one.
Unlike Harry and one or two more, I believe that George W. Bush is of about average intelligence and thus way below the abilities that one might reasonably expect of an American President. (Incidentally, I deplore the ad hominem attacks on Bush by listing his linguistic mistakes -- so frequently seen on the Net. Now he's got over the stress of the interviews early in his tenure, he's shown himself quite a fluent talker -- within the range of his own vocabulary.) Indeed, I'm increasingly coming to the view that Bush's decisions over Iraq so far are so crazy that more must be involved than any sort of rational decision-making by Bush alone on behalf of the American people. With his exceedingly limited knowledge of foreign matters, he's just not capable of any sort of strategy, crazy or otherwise. What has triggered me off is hearing yet another apparently objective observer say in convincing tones that the Iraq crisis is not about oil. The latest one was a Tory MP on BBC TV Question Time a couple of days ago. He said that he'd been an oil trader before he became an MP and, because of his past experience, he'd like to assure the studio audience and all viewers that "Iraq was not about oil". He (I've forgotten his name) went on to say that it doesn't matter who owns Iraqi (or Saudi Arabian) oil because the market will distribute it efficiently and cheaply. Well . . . let's not argue about the quasi-free market of oil for now . . . what was significant is that he didn't go on to say that the market (for cheap oil, cheap gas, cheap energy) won't last for more than a decade or two longer. He didn't go on to say that, although the supply of oil and gas is not a crucial problem at the moment, it is soon going to be. Do we think for one minute that the US State Department has not *intensively* studied the costs and supply of oil, gas and other (much more expensive) alternative fossil fuels? Of course it has. The whole top establishment layer of America, England and other developed countries must know that the future of oil supplies will be the *only* game in town in 10/20/30 years. Bush and those who are behind him (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush Snr, Carlyle Group [including the bin Laden family], various oil companies, and probably Kissinger's bunch of corporate clients) are as aware of this as anybody else in that top information-privileged layer. They must also be aware that China's economy has the potential of being at least two or three times larger then America's in 30 years' time -- and that China's demands for cheap Middle East oil will be much greater than America's within about 10-15 years if present growth rates are maintained. Therefore, unless America and China are going to fall out in a big way, it's imperative that Iraqi oil (about one third to one half Saudi's reserves) must come into full play as soon as possible (oil fields take 10 to 20 years to fully develop). America doesn't want to fall out with China, of course, because (a) it would be exceedingly messy, and (b) China is such a huge market for American corporations (and, also, its prosperity will pay for many ordinary Americans' pensions in the future). But there'll be tension, of course. However, if America can get preferential rights to Iraqi oil in much the same way that it has had to Saudi Arabian oil for the past 50 years, then American corporations will feel a little better. And, if a consortium consisting of the group behind George W Bush gets preferential rights to Iraqi oil then all the better because they know that they'll probably have to share more and more of Saudi oil with China. (And Tony Blair must be deeply involved in this, too. The mysterious Carlyle Group behind Bush bought an important [R&D] chunk of UK's Defence Department recently -- very quietly and very mysteriously.) Bush is anti-Saddam, not because the latter is a nasty piece of goods, which he is, but because he's not allowing the Bush/Carlyle/Kissinger consortium/ia more scope in developing Iraqi oil -- particularly the deep, but prolific, oil fields of northern Iraq (Bush will continue to treat the Kurds with contempt and never allow them autonomy for this reason). I still don't think that America (and a few token English troops) will invade Iraq in a thorough-going, systematic way. If Saddam fights hand-to-hand in the cities then the body count would be too great for American public opinion. (Besides, Bush would have large scale defections from the American forces.) However, Bush will maintain the pressure on Iraq as high as possible for as long as possible until the regime cracks and deals can be made. At the same time he's keeping his eye on Saudi Arabia. Politically, it's a powder keg that, as sure as eggs are eggs, will blow up sometime soon (as will Iran and quite possibly Kuwait and one or two more of the Emirates). So that's why there are pockets of American special forces all round the Middle East -- and steadily growing. As an industrial chemist (40 years ago!) I'm privileged to some extent by having a reasonably good grasp of basic thermodynamics. Thinking about the energy that drives all chemical and mechanical processes is automatic to me. I wish more people had been taught the basics of chemistry then they, too, would understand that the cheap oil and, more recently, even cheaper natural gas, is the *only* reason for the sybaritic lifestyle of average Americans and Europeans in the last 50 years. This is due to end in the next 30 years and possibly earlier rather than later. We're going to have to work hard (intellectually) to develop alternative energy technologies in order to survive in decent condition. The only research group in the world that I'm aware of so far that is starting out on the necessary R&D trail is Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith's Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives in Rockland, Maryland. (It is significant that, within weeks of Venter's plans being announced, the US government piled in with sufficient intitial funding even though IBEA is legally an independent charity.) No commercial corporation has yet, to my knowledge, realised the importance of this at least at board level, but we can be sure that dozens, scores, and hundreds of research teams will be pursuing the same trail (genomic production methods) before very long. Certainly China, with more than 20,000 genomic researchers already, will not be long in following suite -- and very possibly overtaking America. Keith Hudson ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
